Listening Diaryfeatures artists of all kinds talking about the music they listen to in their day-to-day lives.

On his boldly eclectic new album, No Shape, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas proudly shows off his range, offering his own spin on convulsing epics, slithery R&B odes, skewed chamber pop, and radical balladry. These songs don’t really resolve songs in ways you’d expect—a quality that’s echoed often in the music he listened to over the course of a week in March, as he wrapped up a promo trip to London and headed home to Seattle to rehearse for his current tour.

Illustrations by Noelle Roth

Saturday, March 25, 10 a.m.

After my last album, a couple people asked me if Talk Talk was an influence—but I hadn’t ever listened to them. So I decided to listen and became really obsessed. Now I totally count [Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis] as a for-real influence. I put his self-titled solo album on my phone before I left for London, and it was the only music I had the whole time; I never had strong enough Wi-Fi anywhere I went, so I was listening to it a lot.

There’s a lot of push and pull on this record. Somehow, it’s always sort of fucked up. It’s never super satisfying but in an awesome way—it never goes quite where you think it’s going to go. The weird thing is how instantly familiar it is, but then the more you listen to it, the less familiar it is. But my favorite thing is how his voice weaves in and out, like an instrument, and how much he sings behind the music. I have a strange, not very traditional voice—I’m not Adele. I like hearing voices that can be beautiful but not because they’re crystal clear.

Saturday, March 25, 12 p.m.

I was listening to this in the car home from the airport. I bought a Honda Fit, but my boyfriend drives it. Right when you get in the car, it automatically plays Beyoncé. We can’t make it stop. I handle the music, but he has a limit with my playlist. I have a British folk thing—that’s where he draws the line; anything that’s very Renaissance, he’s not into. I get a hankering for it in the car, I don’t know why. I need that pan flute.

Anyway, Sia’s lyrics are much better than most pop music lyrics, I think. She also goes for it to the point where it sounds like she can’t ever sing again. There’s something almost ecstatic about it that I enjoy. You don’t hear that as much in pop music, where everyone is obsessed with having everything seem so easy. It’s cooler to not show how hard it is. I like to hear effort.

Sunday, March 26, 1 p.m.

I was listening to this around the house, and I feel like she’s drawing from a lot of my favorite albums growing up. I love that it’s just straight-up PJ Harvey—but the phrasing is so completely Feist’s. I like Feist’s music because it’s really smart, but it’s really free and soulful at the same time. Sometimes you only get one or the other.

If I’m not writing, I can download a newer album everybody’s making a fuss about. But when I’m writing, I keep myself in my own zone—I worry about listening to new music that’ll inform me too much. I’m the kind of person who goes to another country and starts speaking in an accent after three days. I really never want to try to be cool. I just listened to the Frank Ocean album on the plane like a month ago for the first time.

Monday, March 27, 2 p.m.

That was a moment. I was still jet lagged and cried while singing along. I didn’t even listen to it—I actually just started singing it randomly. I was walking through my house and got connected to it in a weird way. The chorus is a really basic lyric, but I don’t mean that in a mean way. It’s like that thing when you break up with someone and, no matter how corny the break up song is, it’s for you.

I was doing a lot of photo shoots and press, and it’s this strange combination of everybody taking your picture and you look really good, but it’s also a really insecure time. Friends will ask me, “What do you think of this picture?” and it’s so obviously a checklist of what they want to have shown in the picture, whatever their insecurities are. But the attractive thing is way more than a chin being just so. That kind of superficial stuff is embarrassing to me to have think about so much. It’s an easy place to put general anxiety.

Tuesday, March 28, 3 p.m.

I was working out on my rowing machine—it’s low impact. I’ve never really had an exercise I do as an adult. I bought it to see if I could start exercising, and I actually really like it. With this song, I do it casually until the chorus and then I really go for it, like sprint-row. I don’t know any of Mr. Mister’s other songs, but I love this one.

Wednesday, March 30, 8 p.m.

I was driving to the grocery store. I’ve been listening to “Compensation” over and over again for months. It’s just so simple and it’s only two minutes long. Even though I’ve been listening to Nina for so long, I can always go find something of hers I’ve never heard before. I like any really defiant live performances where’s she’s ready to tell someone to sit down if they stand up in the crowd, or when she tells the band to slow down or speed up. She’s just so in control. On some of the recordings, she doesn’t even seem to care about the song at all. She’s just sort of talking the lyrics, like, blah blah blah. Somehow, I’m still like, Yes.

Thursday, March 31, 2 p.m.

I was listening to Diamanda to get pumped for her show in Seattle that night. I never thought I would get the chance to see her. The show was incredible. It was exactly what you want. There’s no banter. It’s just intense from start to finish. Also, everybody there was so excited, and the music was so fucked up and dark—there’s something really weirdly heartwarming about that. Her whole thing is like being really close to the source. There’s no filter. She just puts her claws in something and then starts fucking freaking out. That’s kind of how I want to be, too.

Friday, March 1, 10 p.m.

I was playing this for the band because we were thinking of covering it. I feel like I could sing this and not have it be the way he intended. It sounds more like an outsider-y type thing to me. Like when you go to church and you feel like all the things that people are doing there don’t include you, or how all the love songs are not for the kind of love you have. I don’t think that was what he was intending, but it’s what I heard when I first heard that song.

Saturday, March 2, 11 p.m.

I was also playing this song for the band, to show the inspiration behind [“Die 4 You”], from the new album. This song is so heavy with mood, no matter what you’re doing or where you are, you’re just sucked into it. I’ve been obsessed with David Lynch since I was a kid and then hearing this song, it’s almost the root of a lot of the music Lynch uses. There’s a beginning to that.